


Twelvetide

by LacrimaDraconis



Series: Unconnected Holiday Fics [4]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 12 Days of Sterek, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Everyone Is Alive, First Kiss, Fluff, Holidays, M/M, vaguely set in the future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 00:36:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5436890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LacrimaDraconis/pseuds/LacrimaDraconis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been three months and 27 days since Derek had come back to Beacon Hills. The days leading up to Christmas he finds tiny little gifts on his kitchen counter every day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twelvetide

**Author's Note:**

> Happy holidays!

It had been three months and 27 days since Derek had come back to Beacon Hills – this time staying for good. He had finally made peace with his home town and came to accept a very important thing.  While he didn’t expect to live here happily ever after, he knew for sure now that happiness definitely wasn’t waiting for him elsewhere.

 

So Derek found a crappy job at a local bookstore which didn’t pay him nearly enough to endure all the soccer moms who felt entitled to his service, but the job was more about giving him something to do with his spare time than anything else. He shuddered at the thought of them staring creepily at him, and no matter what Stiles claimed, this wasn’t fate’s way of payback for Derek’s own former creeper tendencies. He might deserve a lot of things, but Derek absolutely did not deserve this. But other than that, he had settled into a more (like Stiles) or less (like Liam) close but overall easy friendship with most of Scott's pack and also his former betas. Things with Isaac were still a little awkward sometimes, both of them tip-toeing around each other and often being more polite than the situation deserved but there was progress and Derek was convinced it would only get better with time.

 

Now though Christmas time was rapidly approaching and even after eight years without the majority of his family, it still didn't come easily for Derek. It was the first time since he was back that he felt somewhat out of place, like an intruder, and felt he didn't truly belong. Sure, Stiles had asked him time and again to join the traditional Stilinski-McCall-Christmas-dinner, the conversation bringing a fond smile to Derek’s features as he tended to replay it in his head from time to time.

 

"Come on dude, at least for Christmas Day."

 

"Don't call me dude."

 

And though Derek knew the invitation was genuine and everyone would be glad to have him over, he wasn't really sure it was yet his place to be.  Ever since the fire Laura and him had mostly tried to avoid Christmas - quite a bold venture, considering they spend a few years in New York. Living in the city was practically like getting Christmas shoved in your face 24/7. Another reason, one he suspected nobody alive knew about, was that it was also his birthday and the days leading up to the holiday season made him even more aware of hiss losses and failings. He wanted to try, wanted to join his friends and start over and Derek couldn’t precisely grasp what was holding him back. Maybe all he needed was a little push in the right direction.

 

 

It began on December 14th, a rainy, slightly cold day with certain crispness to the air that was typical for the Beacon Hills area during this time of year. Derek's work day had been mediocre at best, and for about the third time that week he had come to the conclusion he seriously needed to consider taking the Sheriff up on his offer to become a deputy. The prospect of wearing a uniform daily wasn’t exactly appealing to him, but it was certainly better than keeping his current job. Yes, he loved reading and yes he loved books, but the circumstances weren’t worth it. Still musing about this Derek was just making his way into the loft, thoughts racing when a somewhat unexpected smell hit his nostrils, making his head snap up almost on instinct. Someone had been inside, the scent vaguely familiar but somehow masked, and while it wasn't unusual anymore for some of the pack to drop by and hang around his place, it only rarely happened when Derek wasn't home in the first place.

 

He made his way over to the kitchen counter, dropping his groceries when he spotted something from the corner of his eye. A tiny white box with a delicate snowflake printed on it was sitting innocently right next to his spice collection. (So he liked to cook, sue him.) Derek carefully opened the thing, a little wary of surprises, and huffed when he saw what it was. Inside the box a single rusty nail was placed on a fluffy cotton ball bed. Derek frowned, turning the nail over in his hands and picking the white tufts of fabric off it, but he couldn’t make anything of it. It had obviously been left for him though he couldn't figure out why or from whom it came. Decidedly ignoring it for now, he turned his attention back to his grocery bags, starting to pack away everything he wouldn’t need to prepare some sandwiches for dinner.

 

 

To Derek’s utter confusion the gifts didn’t stop with the nail. Over the next few days more things arrived in Derek’s loft, one small box appearing on his kitchen counter every day.  

 

There was an unevenly ripped off piece of carpet, its color a moldy shade of grayish green that must’ve been out of fashion since the early 80’s at least, or so Derek mused. The following day brought an equally atrocious, patterned shred of wallpaper and Derek had to grin at the horrifying image of plastering it all over his living room walls. Sometimes little post-it notes were stuck to the items, more or less useful instructions written in barely readable chicken scratch on it. Derek rolled his eyes at a light bulb which said _When out of bad ideas simply hold above head!_ , and though it made him sigh, it also coaxed a smile out of him. Mostly because it gave him an inkling as to who his secret gift-giving person might be. He didn't dare hope too much on that front though.

 

The first six days Derek didn't quite grasp the meaning behind the things he received although by now they pretty much always came with sticky notes attached to them. A hammer, a 2$ home depot coupon ripped out of a magazine _Shut up, you're loaded and you know it. This has symbolic value,_ a completely crusted paint-brush _You might want to consider buying a new one_ , and eventually the world's tiniest screwdriver that simply read _Not sonic, sorry :((_ That one made Derek laugh out loud into the emptiness of his loft, the memory of Stiles forcing the whole pack to marathon Doctor Who and Boyd and Allison getting into a heated debate about Nine or Ten being the best Doctor still fresh on his mind.

 

On the ninth day Derek found a voucher on his counter, shoved between his regular mail so unceremoniously he almost didn’t catch the yellow envelope sticking out from electricity bills and several pleas from charity organizations, urging him to donate his money to their causes. It was a voucher for Ikea, a little crumpled and worth a total of 5$.

 

Derek felt his eyebrows knit together in confusion, as he kept searching for another note, having come to looking forward to the little jokes, but there was none. Only when he turned around the voucher's envelope he saw the words. They weren’t handwritten this time, but the warehouse’s slogan from a couple of years ago printed on it instead. Something constricted painfully in Derek's chest, feelings threatening to make his throat tight as his heart swelled with emotion and grew about three sizes when he started to understand what all those gifts were supposed to mean. For the first time in a long while he didn't feel ashamed or guilty when tears started welling up in his eyes.

 

_Make your house a home._

 

 

The next day brought Derek a sheet of paper with crudely drawn stick figures on it, labeled _Sourwolf_ , _Banshee_ , _Catwoman_ , _Scarfboy_ and other ridiculous names of the pack members, the drawing stuck to a bright orange toy bulldozer with a piece of duct tape. Since Derek was alone in his loft there was no need to pretend being annoyed by his old nickname and he simply smiled, placing the toy carefully on one of the kitchen shelves. He was thankful this day’s present didn’t leave him an emotional mess.

 

 

Derek found a letter in his mail box early in the evening on December 24. _You might want to sit down for this one, big guy,_ the post-it note stuck to it read and a vague feeling of both dread and hope spread through him, making him nervous and jittery. He didn’t want to sit down though, and if Derek was being honest with himself, he didn’t want to open this one alone either. So he grabbed his keyes from the bowl by the door, the letter safely tucked inside the pocket of his leather jacket, and jumped into the Camaro, hardly holding himself back from speeding all the way over to the Stilinskis’ house.

 

The driveway was unsurprisingly void of the Sheriff’s cruiser when Derek arrived at the house barely ten minutes later. The only illuminated window was that of Stiles’ room and Derek quickly climbed up there, knocking loudly and barely suppressing the grin spreading over his features when he heard Stiles squawk from the inside before his face appeared and the window was opened, allowing Derek to slip into the house.

 

“Was that really necessary, Derek? Seriously?” Stiles asked, the indignation of having been caught unaware ringing through in his voice.

 

“For old time’s sake.” Derek smiled showing a little more teeth than necessary, before sobering and gingerly sitting down on the edge of Stiles’ bed. “So, I got this in the mail today.”

 

Stiles cleared his throat before slowly making his way over to Derek and sinking down on the bed right beside him. “You don’t want to open it?” His voice sounded oddly hesitant, almost insecure to Derek’s ears and it hurt him a little to be the cause of it.

 

“I didn’t want to open it alone,” he clarified, holding the letter out to Stiles. “Read it for me?”

 

Stiles head snapped up at Derek’s quiet and obviously unexpected request, but taking the envelope from Derek and ripping it open. “Yeah, sure.” He quickly scanned the pages before swallowing hard.

 

“ _Dear Mr Hale,_

_We hereby inform you that according to your request_ … oh my God I can’t do this. You get your house back from the county, okay? You get your fucking house in the preserve back and we’re going to restore it and everyone will help and… hmpf.”

 

Derek had his hand pressed over Stiles’ mouth as it seemed like the only way to shut him up. He had seen enough of his rants at this point to try otherwise.

 

“Why?” he asked, slowly removing his hand from Stiles’ face to let him answer.

 

Stiles quickly averted his gaze, a faint blush creeping over his cheeks before he visibly seemed to steel himself. “We want you here, Derek. I want you here, and I want you to have a real home here and I don’t want you to leave. Not ever.”

 

Derek kissed him then, a gentle press of lips against lips and a careful hand tangling in Stiles’ hair, Derek poured his everything into the kiss trying to show Stiles all the feelings he didn’t dare utter out loud. He kept the kiss almost chaste, only a soft swipe of tongue against Stiles’ plush bottom lip that he couldn’t resist before he broke the kiss, resting their foreheads together.

 

“Thank you,” Derek whispered into the warm space between them.

 

Stiles simply smiled, eyes bright in the dim light of his room. “Did you know it was me or was this a lucky guess?”

 

“I hoped it was you,” Derek murmured before closing the distance and brushing his mouth against Stiles’ again, unable to witness his face go unbearably tender and kissing the words “Welcome Home, Derek”, right off of his lips.

 

 

*Epilogue*

 

Dinner on Christmas Day was eventually spent with the whole pack and their parents at the McCall house, where too much food was served and mock fights over board games ensued before gifts were exchanged.

 

Derek wrinkled his nose at the wrapped up box Stiles held out for him to take, a mischievous smile making his eyes crinkle. “Jesus Christ, Stiles. This is making my eyes water.”

 

“I know,” Stiles cackled, “it’s the most obnoxious scent I could find, but I think it’ll eventually complete the whole interior design of the restored house.”

 

It was a scented candle, weirdly shaped and a disgusting vaguely vanilla smell pouring off of it. “I think I might accidentally forget this here,” Derek said drily.

 

Stiles grinned sweetly at him, before leaning in and pressing a kiss to Derek’s lips. “Happy Birthday, Derek.”

 

Derek hugged him tight to his chest and smiled. He hadn’t had a better Christmas in years.

 

FIN


End file.
